


Reveal

by Axis2ClusterB, o_contrary



Series: Show and Tell [2]
Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Barebacking, Canon-Typical Drug Use, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, D/s themes, F/M, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Prostitution, Underage Prostitution, canon-typical implied homophobia/homophobic slurs, grievous bodily harm, implied and actual non-con (non-graphic), read the notes, spoilers for fun town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 08:57:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3350840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Axis2ClusterB/pseuds/Axis2ClusterB, https://archiveofourown.org/users/o_contrary/pseuds/o_contrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Juice looks up at him, and Chibs would swear he’s never seen the lad’s eyes this dark, this intense, and says, “You did a good thing tonight. You did a <i>right thing</i>.” Then Juice ducks his head, mouth warm and wet around Chibs’s cock, and Chibs leans back against the couch and just loses himself.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He’s fairly sure, when the moment comes, that this is not something he should be getting off on.</i>
</p><p>Something's a little off with Juice, lately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reveal

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up not long after Glimpse
> 
> As the tags would indicate, this fic is dark. Please proceed with caution; we weren't overly detailed in the abuse (physical, sexual, psychological), but there are quite a few occurrences.
> 
> Assume all 'Now's refer to 2008. 
> 
> This was supposed to be a first time fic, then it RAN THE FUCK AWAY and did as it damned well pleased, and, y'know, we never did get to the first time, whoops.
> 
> Unbeta'd, but between the two of us, hopefully we caught the major fails. For any that remain, we beg your forbearance.
> 
> Finally: Characters from Sons of Anarchy belong to Kurt Sutter, Sutter Ink, Linson Entertainment, Fox 21, and FX Productions. This is a transformative work of fiction; no copyright infringement is intended. We definitely are not making money off of it.

(Now)

They’ve been at this long enough that Chibs only feels the barest of nervous flutters when he knocks light on Juice’s door at midnight, a six pack in his left hand and another tucked under his arm. He’s fairly sure what his welcome will be, and he’s eager enough for it that it makes him anxious. It takes Juicy a few minutes to get to him, though, just long enough to make him worry that tonight’s the night the lad won’t be here, or he’ll have someone else with him.

And he really doesn’t like what that says about the whole thing he won’t put a name to. 

Then the door opens, Juice blinking sleepily at him in a comforting halo of light from the kitchen, smiling a little more broadly when he sees who’s there and that Chibs is holding up beer. “C’mon in,” Juice says, voice low and just rough enough for Chibs to be sure that he was asleep on the couch. Chibs slides through the opening, catches sight of the small, still-bloody holes on Juice’s chest as he passes, and chokes back his laughter.

Juice leans back against the counter, boneless enough for Chibs to have a pretty good idea of how much pot he’s already smoked as he gestures to the small wounds on his chest. “Laugh it up,” Juice says, “I’ve already figured your influence here.”

Which just makes Chibs laugh more. The lad is always so much more precise when he’s stoned, and the fact that Chibs associates the word ‘cute’ with it makes him worry about himself. “I got nothing on that, lad,” Chibs says, and Juice makes that sour face at him even as he snags a beer and heads into the living room. “What’d I miss?” Juice asks, and that _does_ give Chibs pause, but he takes his own beer, stows the rest in the fridge, and goes to settle beside Juice on the couch.

“You missed a long fucking night,” is what he finally says, and Juice gives him a look full of impatience.

“Just tell me,” he insists, taking a long swig of his beer. “C’mon, man.”

It’s on the tip of Chibs’s tongue to fuck with the lad, but there’s something in Juice’s eyes that makes him confess, “We found the guy. Carny.”

Juice nods eagerly, settling his beer on the end table. “Did Oswald do it?”

There’s something here, something invested, and it almost makes Chibs wish he’d just gone home. “Nah,” he says, swigs his beer for a moment to think as much as anything else.

Juice just eyes him. “What then?” he prods, when it’s obvious that Chibs is waiting for him.

Chibs eyes him back for a moment. There’s something almost eager about Juice, a dog on point, and he takes a deep breath before he says, “Guy was a clown at the carnival. Oswald got to the moment, couldn’t do it. He left. Clay took the guy’s balls, let him bleed out.”

“Were you there?” Juice demands, and honestly, Chibs is a little uncomfortable with the fervor in Juice’s eyes, because he’s never seen the lad like this before.

He’s not sure just where they’re headed now, but he answers anyway. “Aye, lad, I held him while Clay did it.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Juice goes to his knees, is tugging at Chibs’s belt, has his jeans undone before Chibs can gather himself enough to lace his hands behind the lad’s skull, stutter out, “What the fuck, Juicy?”

Juice looks up at him, and Chibs would swear he’s never seen the lad’s eyes this dark, this intense, and says, “You did a good thing tonight. You did a _right thing_.” Then Juice ducks his head, mouth warm and wet around Chibs’s cock, and Chibs leans back against the couch and just loses himself.

He’s fairly sure, when the moment comes, that this is not something he should be getting off on.

~*~

So, Chibs guesses it’s a ‘thing’ now. He’s never been real sure what people meant by that – a ‘thing’ – but there are more toothbrushes in his bathroom and in Juice’s and the kid doesn’t bother separating socks and undershirts and shit when he does laundry. Chibs’s dryer has been busted for almost a year, and Juice had rolled his eyes so hard when he told the lad he just hung that shit over the shower rod to dry that he’s fairly sure Juicy saw his own brain, so now they spend more time at Juice’s.

It’s nicer than his place, anyway; that girlfriend the lad had had off and on from around the time he hit Charming ‘til, well… Chibs really isn’t sure just when that ended – or, hell, _if_ it had ended - had helped Juice fix the house up a bit. That's the common thought, anyway. Chibs thinks, after getting to know Juicy, that it's just that the lad likes to have some order. That much is obvious in the computer components that are neatly labeled on shelves, the way the kid actually has different drawers in the big, hardwood dresser for socks and underwear and those too-big, soft pajama pants the kid likes for night.  
So Chibs guesses that it’s something more than a whole lotta kinky sex at this point, and is surprised to find that he’s good with that, that he likes the lad’s company even more, now. Nights like this, rare nights when there’s nothing going on and they can just lie around, Chibs watching a movie and Juice with the laptop pulled up on the bed, Chibs realizes that he’s as comfortable here as he’s ever been.

Go figure.

Laid back and relaxed with the slow warmth of his Jameson nightcap, a really spectacular blow job, and a few pulls off of Juice’s joint, he reaches out to give Juice’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

The lad freezes, just for an instant, before melting into the touch. It happens now and then – Chibs first noticed it long before toothbrushes and laundry – but the last few days… Juice has flinched at every touch, pulled in on himself, up and gone somewhere that Chibs doesn’t understand and can’t follow him to. And apparently, Chibs is just the right combination of buzzed to finally come out and ask about it rather than hold his tongue like he has so many times before. He’s not so buzzed that he thinks just jumping right on it would be the way to go, though. “Hey, Juicy,” he drawls instead, soothing, “just me, laddie.”

Juice makes an acknowledging sound, but Chibs can feel a fine spread of tension growing under his skin, and he takes his hand back, his flush of content receding rapidly under concern. The lad turns to look at him with the loss of contact, eyes huge and apologetic and just a little trapped, like he’s fighting something, but Chibs can’t for the life of him discern whether the origin is internal or not, let alone how to address it. “Just startled me is all, Chibbie.” The lad’s attempt to make his voice light falls flat, and Chibs can feel his brow begin to furrow.

“Seem to startle you an awful lot lately, Juice,” he says, making his own try at casual, intending only to point out this tick in Juice’s behavior, but Juice treats it like an accusation, rearing back as words fly from his mouth so fast they just tumble all over each other.

“I’m, I’m sorry, I don’t – it’s not – when I’m hacking, and, and, lost in my head, and you just – I just-”

Chibs watches him, unease rolling sour in his gut. He’s had his suspicions about Juice’s past, what may have happened to put those careful layers of defense in place until all most people see is the deceptively simple façade, and this display is doing nothing to allay those suspicions. Usually the lad covers it better, but there’s obviously something rolling around in his head right now, got him all fucked up and thoroughly confirming to Chibs that he’s right. Yeah, other stuff has struck Chibs as weird, and the kid’s always startled a little easy, but this looks like actual panic and something else, just under the surface. “Look,” Chibs interrupts gently, and Juice settles a little, looks a fraction less like he’s going to come out of his skin before Chibs’s eyes. “Look, lad, I dunno what alla this is, but I’d like ta hear it. Not gonna push, but I’d like ta hear it. Help, if I can.”

The look Juice gives him in return is mistrustful, something Chibs has never seen from him before, and it hurts something in him that he honestly thought had died a long time ago, in Ireland with Fiona and Kerrianne. “But see, I do that, and shit changes,” Juice says, weirdly intense, which does exactly nothing to make Chibs think he should back off. “This turns into something else, and I don’t know if that’s what either one of us wants. Or I just tell you you’re imagining shit, and that gets us both off the hook, and then we fuck and go to bed and get up in the morning and everything is back like it was.”

Chibs considers it. This _thing_ with Juice, it’s easy. Kinky sex in a warm bed in a clean house, somebody that has taken to buying the kind of beer he likes – not that American shite – and no complications. Yeah, the kid startles easy sometimes, and there are nights when he’s distant and a little bit spooky, but that’s not all the time and, for the most part… Easy. Uncomplicated. He figures he owes it to Juice to let him keep his secrets, and he thinks he’s probably more surprised than Juicy to hear himself say, “Well. Out wi’ it then, lad. Getting late.”

Juice stares at him, eyes bleak, and Chibs almost wants to take it back, but now he’s certain that this bell can’t be unrung; more importantly, it’ll be wrong to try. He knows he’s not imagining anything, and based on the look Juice is giving him, the lad knows it, too. He wonders how many people Juice has given this particular out to, and hates the idea that maybe no one has cared enough to not take it.

“You’ll hate me,” Juice claims, grimly certain, “or at least just not want anything to do with me after.”

And that – melodramatic nature of the statement aside – that feels like someone – not just someone, _Juice_ – has reached into his chest and raked talons over his heart, makes his stomach turn over on his whiskey. But instead of retreating like Juice probably expects, probably _wants_ , he sits up straighter and looks Juice in the eye, doesn’t try to hide the maelstrom going on in his head, and dredges up every ounce of conviction he can muster. Which, given there’s clearly something both significant and unpleasant that’s gone on with the lad, is a considerable amount.

“You know a little of my history, aye,” he starts, and he’s fully aware that this is an invitation of sorts, “so you know I’ve seen, and done, and had done to me, some vile, terrible things. Most for - or at - the hands of the people closest to me, lad, but tha’s not you, and it never will be you. Whatever I’m asking you to tell me, it’s – it’s _history_ , has nothing to do with us right here, and it’s never even crossed my mind to not want to know you. Tha’s not goina change now, ye hear?”

Chibs bites off the torrent of words with a near-audible snap, frustrated with the way they just aren’t quite communicating what it is he wants to get across, and wholly at a loss to come up with anything to ease Juice’s troubled expression. When the lad’s eyes go distant he thinks that’s it, he’s whiffed it, all that’s left for him is a scramble through the wreckage and a heroic dose of self-recrimination.

Something must have got through, though, because Juice reaches for a fresh joint and lights it, taking a deep pull that screams of steeling himself. Through the leaking smoke, he warns, “Just remember you _asked for this_ ,” unexpectedly fierce before his voice goes hollow and _old_ , telling Chibs about his mama, his sisters, and the neverending parade of scumbags in his early years.

~*~

(1991)

Juan Carlos Ortiz is six when stepdad #1 leaves, eight when his mama remarries. She doesn’t tell the kids what’s going on – she leaves them with Aunt Elena for the weekend, and when she comes back, there’s a ring on her finger and Ted’s got suitcases with him. They have a party that night and Juan Carlos is allowed to stay up for it, running beers and dumping ashtrays, and he’s proud even though there’s something about the sour smell of beer and the shrill voices of the adults that makes him sad. 

When he gets up in the morning, all of the ashtrays that were empty are full again and Ted’s asleep on the couch, half-full beer bottle sweating a ring onto the end table at his head. Juan Carlos goes about cleaning up quietly, but Ted still snorts himself awake when two bottles clink against each other just a tone too loudly. He sits up on the couch, downs the rest of the beer he passed out on, then backhands Juan Carlos for “making too goddamn much noise this fucking early.” It’s casual, and sets the tone for the next two years.

~*~

(Now)

The first few sentences, it’s like Juice has yanked them from himself, and he hasn’t so much as looked up at Chibs since he started fumbling his way through the words. It’s not so much that the lad’s telling him as it is that he’s reliving these things, from the sound of the words, the way they come out stilted. 

Chibs doesn’t touch him, knows that won’t help, but he does say, soft, “Got worse, aye?” He knows the lad wouldn’t be all knotted up like this over getting knocked around, not with the other cues he’s gotten, not with what he’s heard Juicy say in his sleep. Juice glances up, something grateful on his face, and nods. When the lad picks his words back up again, they come a bit easier.

~*~

(1995)

There’s nothing gentle about Ted, not even for Juan Carlos’s mama after the first week, and he takes to trying to make himself as small and hidden and quiet as possible. Except when Ted raises his hand to one of Juan Carlos’s sisters; that, he runs into every time.

His mother kicks Ted out after an argument, not unusual, but so loud it makes his ears hurt, makes him curl up in the darkest corner of the room he shares with his two baby sisters, hands over his ears as he recites nursery rhymes to them. He only knows his mama is angry about a stain on Ted’s collar, and that Ted is gone when he creeps out hours later in the silence after the slamming doors.

The apartment is tense after that, his mama gone most of the time and distracted when she’s there, but she only ever tells them to shut up and let her think when they clamor for reassurance, never backs it up with fists. There are more men, none of them kind but most of them too apathetic to care one way or another, and Juan Carlos and his sisters settle in to a cautious optimism that only the young are capable of, thinking that maybe Ted was the worst of it.

That optimism is shattered two years later, though, when Juan Carlos is 12. That’s when his mama marries Ramon, who takes a liking to Juan Carlos and he and his sisters learn that there are far worse things that a man can do to you than smack you around.

At first, when Juan Carlos thinks it’s just him, he deals. Doesn’t say anything. Ramon works, at least, doesn’t use his fists on any of them, and Juan Carlos figures that means shit’s not too bad. It’s not his sisters, at least.

Of course, that’s before he comes home from school early one day and realizes that he’s been terribly, awfully wrong. He hears the noises from the room the two older girls share, and he doesn’t even bother looking in. He goes to his room, pulls out his baseball bat, and gives his level best to beating Ramon to death.

~*~

(Now)

At this, Chibs moves to him, but Juice shakes his head. “Let me finish it,” he says hoarsely. “You wanted me to tell it, now let me finish it,” and Chibs subsides.

~*~

(1995)

He’s never quite sure how all of the rest of it happens – the blur of police and his mom and sisters crying and the cell at the detention center - but three days later he’s in a holding room in juvie, a rushed-looking caseworker with a kind smile and a name tag identifying her as Rita settling in across from him and pulling out her briefcase.

“You’ll have to go to court,” is the first thing she says, and Juan Carlos feels his stomach shrivel up on itself.

“I had to –” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“I know,” she says, gently, reaching out to take his hand. “Juan Carlos, I know. The police talked to your sisters, took your statement, and no one doubts you. Please don’t think that. But the fact remains that you blinded Ramon Perez, probably for life. The knee reconstruction alone is going to take two separate surgeries, and the facial work… well, that’ll be more than two, to say the least.” Rita leans in closer. “You’re not going to have to serve your time in this detention center,” she says. “The judge will be sympathetic. There are residential programs, places where you’ll get your education and socialization with other young men… and Juan Carlos, you’ll be safe there.”

That night in his cell, Juan Carlos thinks about ‘safe.’ It’s not really a word that makes sense to him right now. Then he thinks about Ramon, and the fact that he can’t see little kids anymore, and that he won’t walk right anymore, and that they may never get his face right again – and that helps him sleep.

~*~

Juan decides quickly that the ‘juvenile residential program’ that his caseworker promises is the best deal she’s ever seen anyone in his position get is actually hell. There are thirty of them in the halfway house, and it spreads quickly why he’s there – he has no idea how, but everyone knows, and everyone either wants him to prove he’s a ‘badass’ or they want to beat the shit out of him to prove that they are. 

And then there’s the whole thing that started this shit in the first place – being young, and small for his age, and ‘pretty’. He starts going by Juan just because it makes him feel older and he hopes, somehow, that it’ll make him _seem_ older, too, even though he knows it’s stupid and it doesn’t seem to have any effect whatsoever.

Aunt Elena visits now and then, and that’s how he finds out that all four of his sisters have been put in the system, and the chances of him seeing them again are slim to none.

He’s not sure how to feel about that. He’s missed them while he’s been inside, worried about them being stuck in that hell passing for a home life, so he guesses he’s relieved, more than anything. Especially for the younger girls, little Pepita and Maria who haven’t been touched by any of this because Juan wouldn’t let them be. There’s no acknowledging that there’s a chance they could end up somewhere worse, and Rita promises him that the chances are good that they’ll eventually be adopted. When he presses about the two older girls – Constance, Alita – Rita hedges, and that scares him, because she never has before. He finally stops asking, and can tell she’s relieved. 

He also feels like a failure, for not being able to stop it all in the first place. He’d tried so hard to be good, to help his mama and care for his sisters, and it had all come out so goddamned wrong.

It’s easier to distract himself than to dwell on it, so he starts poking around the library and ancient computers, finds that they could hold his usually-scattered interest for hours at a time were it not for the carefully monitored usage. He studies fighting, in the yard and on paper, mentally noting the most underhanded tactics and making a game of trying to come up with something even worse.

He never uses the punching bags, because then he really might as well hang a sign on his back with an enormous target on it and “Prove how big your dick is” for a caption.

~*~

When he gets out, he’s 16, still on the small side, still too pretty. Despite the ‘cushy’ juvenile residential center, he has a shiny new collection of scars, but they’re all hidden under his clothes. His face is still at least four years too young for his age, and he can’t help wishing for it to catch the fuck up, like that’ll help.

His mother still needs a man in her life to feel complete, apparently; she’s waiting when he walks out and the sight makes him stutter to a halt. He’d been expecting Rita, and she would have been a more welcome sight.

“Juan Carlos, mi pequeño, I have missed you. Look how you’ve grown!”

He wants to lash out, ask why she’s here _now_ , eyes full of promises he can’t bring himself to trust. But that’s his mother, and maybe if Juan makes one more try, maybe it’ll come out okay this time.

‘It’s Juan,’ he wants to correct her, but doesn’t bother. He does let her pull him close, and he doesn’t ask about his sisters.

~*~

(Now)

Chibs has to bite the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood to hold in the rain of vitriol he wants to unleash of how fucking _wrong_ this all is. But it won’t help. He knows it won’t help, so he clamps down and keeps it to himself, saves it shoved down with the rest of his mental hit list to take out and examine later when he needs to beat the shit out of something, or test-fire a weapons shipment, or fucking kill someone.

Juice flicks him a look from the corner of his eye, like he knows exactly what Chibs is doing and can’t quite bring himself to believe that someone would be angry on his behalf. But Chibs can see it, Juice pulling himself together, reaching out one more time when it has only ever brought him pain. “How many more?” he grates out, and Juice smiles thinly.

“Depends on how you look at it,” he replies, and Chibs gets that he glosses over chunks of the next part, and he isn’t sure what it says about him that he’s actually happy when Juice gets to being homeless at 16.

~*~

(Then)

Juan sees this round as the worst ever. This apartment is even smaller, even shittier and made intolerable by the absence of his sisters, and his mother is deep in something pharmaceutical that totally numbs her to his presence. Juan doesn’t bother to learn the guy’s name – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s big, and he’s mean, and he grabs Juan’s ass every time they pass in the hallway. One night, he takes a couple too many of his mom’s pills and, while he fucking loves the floaty high, he doesn’t love waking up the next morning with #4 in his bed.

He moves so fast he doesn’t really have time to process it until #4’s spitting epithets at him from the floor, blood dripping from his nose. Juan doesn’t even try to hide the viciousness of his smile, the fact that he’ll bite and scratch and tear if #4 tries to lay one more finger on him writ bold on every tooth he’s bared.

Later, he overhears #4 bitching to Juan’s mother about what a worthless, uncooperative shit he is, which is fine. The less the guy thinks of him, the better, and if Juan should ever fall so low as to want the approval of that twisted fuck, he hopes someone will do him the favor of putting him out of his misery.

But then comes his mother’s reply, and finally, her real motivations for bringing him back, shit, probably for having him and his sisters in the first place is laid out, in the open and starkly illuminated. “You know how the system works, papi, the check’s bigger with a dependent in the house. His sisters are gone, he’s the best I can do.”

And Juan had known, when she came to collect him from juvie – residential center, whatever – that he couldn’t trust her any more this time around than any other. He hadn’t, he doesn’t.

If she and her endless stream of shitty goddamned men hadn’t left him so completely hollowed out, he thinks this would hurt, would score him to the bone and leave him screaming at the unfairness.

Instead, he turns on his heel, goes to his room, and stuffs everything he can carry in the bag he’d brought with him from juvie that he’d never fully unpacked in the first place and walks right out the door.

He’s pretty sure neither of them notice.

Problem is, once he’s out, he has no idea what to do with himself, wanders aimlessly long into the night before curling up in the recess of a storefront door and falling asleep. He thinks it’s far enough outside of the radius his mother, or, god forbid, #4, would bother looking for him to be safe, but he can’t even bring himself to care one way or another before sleep overtakes him.

Turns out, it’s a garage. He learns this when the proprietor, an elderly, stoop-shouldered gentleman with a presence that would make Mike Tyson quail, unceremoniously opens the mechanic bay door Juan had been sleeping beside.

“Reckon I’ll have to charge you rent for the night,” he says without preamble, but there’s a look in his eye that’s not unkind. “Pop Steinman, but you can call me Pop, like everyone else. You any good with a wrench?”

Juan has never so much as filled a gas tank in his life, but he’s always been good at fixing things. Mechanical, technical kinds of things, at any rate. And he’s gotten good with computers, and everyone needs help with computers now, right? When he tells Pop as much, he lets out a deep bark of a laugh and claps Juan on the back, then makes a deal that if he’ll take on the computer and make an effort to learn what Pop’s willing to teach him about the many joys of the internal combustion engine and make himself useful, he can use the cot in the back office.

It’s all Juan can do not to prostrate himself at Pop’s feet in relief, but he just nods instead and follows Pop inside for the grand tour.

Over the next week or so, he brings the ancient, disorganized computer and filing system up to date, and learns simple auto maintenance tasks like oil changes and system flushes. It comes to him stupid easy, and Pop… Pop never touches him other than to demonstrate something Juan doesn’t have quite right, or to let him know when he’s done well, and it’s a welcome, if dizzying, change.

As kindnesses go, that’s an unintentional one, but it’s a balm to Juan’s soul all the same, especially with no one looking for him and Juan having to tell himself over and over that it doesn’t hurt.

But Pop can’t pay him more than a pittance, and Juan doesn’t want to be stuck on a cot in the back office of his workplace and depending on charity for forever. What to do about it is a question he has no answer to for a few weeks; he’s not in a _hurry_ to leave, not least because he’s learning quickly that Pop knows more about cars and engines than most people forget in a lifetime, and Juan wants to know all of it, too.

The answer comes to him one night a few weeks after Pop takes him in, while he’s lying on the cot and trying to decide which is the worse option between falling asleep and staying awake. He’s had days upon days now of looking over his shoulder, and having nothing and no one try to ambush him in some dark corner.

Until today, when the last customer had gotten all up in Juice’s business and pinched his ass on her way out, and now he can’t stop thinking about ho– the apartment. His mom, the men.

How he was just some piece of ass to them.

Then he remembers, with sudden clarity, what his mother had said that made him pack his shit and leave, that his worthless ass was actually worth money, being under that roof, and smiles.

It’s probably a gross parody of a smile, but. If Juan’s ass is worth money, he might as well be the one benefiting from it.

~*~

For all that computers and mechanics come easily to Juan, the hooking takes a little longer to figure out. Sex has never been something he’s done voluntarily.

It takes one night for his flimsy illusions of skating by with handjobs and blowjobs to be shredded. The only thing Pop says when he limps in the next morning is “You tell me if you need a doctor, and I’ll take you. Other than that, not my place to judge.”

Juan is, once again, stupidly grateful, and resolves not to have to take him up on the offer. That only lasts about a week, though; when Juan gets the bright idea to try getting himself prepped – had to do _research_ , for fuck’s sake – before going out, the first john with deep dicking some pretty Puerto Rican ass in mind backhands Juan so hard, Pop has to take him to the clinic to get checked for a concussion in the morning.

~*~

It takes a while, but eventually, with the money scraped together from his time at Pop’s and on his knees or against walls, he has enough for a gift to himself. 

He’s already taken to shaving his head – never, ever, give them something extra to grab, and god, he feels so sorry for the girls, wants to punch every scumbag that approaches them – so he goes to a tattoo parlor, picks a design for both sides of his skull. It’s some bullshit tribal symbol, he knows, meaningless in any greater context, but they make him think of lightning, of power.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurs to him this should make him less ‘pretty’, make him look tougher. Maybe he won’t have quite so many injuries for Pop to not ask about in the mornings.

He finds that in some cases, it’s exactly the opposite.

The worst is when they want to talk about his tatts, ask what they mean, if it hurt to have them done – really? 

One of the girls he has breakfast with sometimes – Angelina, and she’s gorgeous, all-American cheerleader girl-next-door type, if you ignore the darkness howling behind her eyes – tells him one morning that “The johns _always_ want to talk about tatts.” She leans in for Juice to light her cigarette, morning still dark outside the diner windows, smoke curling from her mouth as she says, “Makes you more real to ‘em, I guess.”

Carlos, not Juan, not anymore, but fucked if he’s going to dedicate one ounce of thought toward something more clever for his tricks, thanks, feels his mouth twist. “Seems like us not being real would be kind of the point.”

Angie shrugs. “I dunno, probably different with you being a guy, too. I got one that wants me to be a virgin every time he fucks me. You get anything like that, JC?” She giggles a little when she says it, because she enjoys fucking with him about his double-first name.

And the fact that he still goes to Mass.

And pretty much everything else she can come up with to fuck with him about; just his luck his initials practically beg for second coming jokes.

He frowns, toying with his coffee stirrer, something to keep his hands occupied. “Most just want to push me around. Some of ‘em wanna be pushed, so they can pretend they’ve fought me off and turn it ‘round on me.” Angie just nods; she’s been at this longer than him, has probably seen and done things that would shock him, even now. “I got one who wants to pretend I’m his kid, though. Hard not to use teeth.”

She sobers at that, sips her own coffee. “Those are bad, yeah.”

Carlos drops his eyes, rubbing at the back of his neck. This isn’t something he _does_ , talking about home; no one turns tricks because of a stable and well-adjusted family life, and most of his brethren are content to leave it at that. But the words keep clawing at his throat like bile, until he can’t hold them back anymore. “At least I know how to play it, with him.”

Angie stays silent at that, eyes haunted and angry as she lays one hand over his, squeezes gently. Carlos blinks hard, gritting his teeth. “Better he comes to me than taking that shit home, right?”

The look Angie gives him is pitying, and probably the sweetest thing he’s ever seen on her face. “You really believe that, don’t you?” she asks.

The thing is, he doesn’t. He knows it’s just a lie they probably all tell themselves at some point, something to help cling to whatever resembles sanity. But then the moment’s gone before he can answer and she can tell him she knows, and she shoves back from the table, picking up her smokes and her black leather backpack. “Let’s get outta here, the smell of grease is making me sick.” She links her fingers through his as they leave, bumps her shoulder against his and he realizes she’s probably the only friend he’s ever really had.

~*~

(Now)

Chibs watches silently as Juice exhales another stream of pot smoke, mind a disjointed mess as he files through what Juice has been telling him. He knows he’s staring, knows Juice knows it, for all the lad won’t look at him. And he gets that, that some things are simply too painful to get through and acknowledge at the same time. 

He’d bet money Juice has never spoken of any of this before, knows he wouldn’t be doing it now were it not for the weed and the thing with Oswald’s daughter – because he gets it now, that that’s what’s had Juice so rattled. But Chibs needs to hear this, as much as Juice probably needs to come out with it all, so he keeps quiet and lets the lad ramble without interruption. Juice’s eyes flick to the side once, catching on him, and there’s a dip of his head – gratitude, Chibs thinks. He limits his reaction to the clench of his fists at his sides, knows Juice can feel the hint of movement even if he won’t react. Keeping his breath steady, he lets his knuckles brush against the seam of Juice’s pants before relaxing his fingers. They start to tense up when Juice gets talking again, and Chibs uses that, the slow flex and release, something to ground them both with.

~*~

(1999)

Carlos has been at Pop’s about five months when the motorcycle comes in, a ’79 Harley FXEF Fat Bob that an irate Sylvia Goldberg brings by on the way to divorce court. “Torch it, for all I care,” is all she tells them. She actually spits at it on her way out.

“What’d she ever do to you?” Carlos wonders out loud, but he’s captivated. The bike’s in terrible shape, covered in rust and grime and dings, but when he looks at it, all he sees is freedom.

Pop sees the look on his face and sighs. “Got no use for bikes in this shop, too small a market here,” he grumbles. But he makes Carlos a deal that if he puts all the work in off the clock, he can keep her if he can get her running. He’ll even pitch in some of his free time to be certain Carlos is able to drive it with legitimate paperwork and everything, for which Carlos is so profoundly grateful he can’t come out with a single word.

He starts to read everything he can get his hands on, sometimes between johns, and, on one memorable occasion, _to one_ – the easiest $50 Carlos has made yet – and gets to work.

He loves every moment, loves seeing it all come together. He starts spending time at the library, hours on end the rare times when he has them to spend, looking up schematics and manuals, from the most basic knowledge to the most abstract. Computers have always been the one easy thing for him, but now he realizes more what’s possible when you really put your mind to them. His meager checks from Pop and everything he can spare from his trick money go to ordering parts, and he couldn’t be happier about it.

Angie comes by the shop now and then, hangs out and passes tools and flirts with Pop ‘til his ears redden, and for a while, it’s all so good that it makes the nights with the sweaty, pawing men worth it.

Then Angie drops off for a few days, and then it’s a week, and then Carlos is consumed with finding her. She, like Carlos, hadn’t gone out of her way to make friends with her contemporaries, but there were a couple of girls she seemed a little closer to than the rest, so he starts there. 

Both Tinka and Jade claim not to have seen her, though, not since the last night Carlos had, and the naked fear in their eyes makes the worry in his gut expand exponentially.

“One of her regulars has been coming around more, you know? Not like that ‘Pretty Woman’ shit, like possessive creeper stuff,” Tinka offers. She’s chewing a lock of unnaturally red hair nervously, hazel eyes hollow, and Carlos refuses to see her as his kid sister. He’ll break, and he can’t afford that.

 _Angie_ can’t afford that.

Jade snorts derisively. “Yeah, must be tough to keep buying into the virgin act when you start hanging around to see how many other guys are getting a piece.” She laughs then, a hysterical edge to it, and it’s all Carlos can do not to throw up.

“I’m gonna work here tonight,” he says instead, and even he can hear the fear ringing in his voice. He’s too goddamn young for this shit, but this is his life, and all he can do is try to keep surviving it. “Either of you see the guy, point him out, okay?”

Tinka nods nervously, but Jade laughs again, the brittle sound of amphetamines in her voice. “Never gonna turn down backup,” she says, even as her eyes dart nervously to the old beater parked at the end of the street, and it feeds Carlos’s anger to know that her pimp’s in there, waiting for his cut of the money. His cut of her.

“Alright,” is what he says, though, and that’s how he becomes a little bit more to the girls, that and the way he beats the shit out of a guy later that night, the one that made Jade scream in the alley.

He’s sick after, the surge of adrenaline and rage too much to tamp down. Violence is not his game, but survival is. Jade helps him roll the guy, though she’s so shaky it’s almost worse. 

“Is this him?” Carlos asks, dividing the cash beyond what Jade would have gotten if she hadn’t screamed. He hands her the larger wad.

“N-no,” she stutters, flinching away. “He just got so rough-”

“It’s okay,” he responds woodenly, but it’s not. None of this is, but that’s not her fault.

It becomes a routine of sorts over the next few days. Carlos gets that the girls are using him as a de facto bodyguard, but Angie’s john will have to turn up at some point, and it’s a lot more likely to be where the girls are. So they split the cash and party favors, and eventually, Carlos spots him. He knows it by the way his skin crawls when he catches the guy staring at _him_ , approaching with accusations of Carlos ruining his Angelina for him, and Carlos feels nothing but desolation when he lets the guy beat him, and nothing but emptiness when he sinks the knife in the bastard’s groin, twists and keeps on twisting until Tinka pulls him away, frantic that the cops will be there any minute.

Like the cops ever turn up around here for anything other than Vice raids, like they’re so thick in this neighborhood where no one sees anything, and they say even less, that they’d turn up for the sounds of a scuffle.

Carlos had made certain that piece of shit wasn’t going to get a call off.

~*~

(Now)

“So I left,” Juice finishes, voice shaking, and Chibs doesn’t move, is scared to breathe, knows if he pulls the lad out of it now, he’ll never get him to talk about this again. “The bike was running then. Not great, but I knew enough to keep it going ‘til I could stay long enough in one place to really get her where she needed to be.”

Juice sighs, rubs a hand over his forehead distractedly. “I never found out about Angie. I kept in touch with Tinka and Jade, and nothing ever came up.” He laughs a little. “Tinka became a teacher, high school poetry at some swanky-ass school in the Upper East Side. She got her ‘Pretty Woman’ story, as much as anybody ever did. Still hear from her, now and then. Jade… Jade just dropped off the face of the earth. Like Angie.”

And another piece of the puzzle slots into place for Chibs, the lad’s thing about the news. More than that, though, there was that case on Long Island not long ago, all of those dead hookers the cops kept finding on some beach or another. Juice checked it obsessively, kept pulling out the computer to check the news pages ‘one more time.’

Chibs is pretty sure he knows now just what the lad was looking for. He’s still scared to say anything, scared to break the spell, but he reaches for Juice’s hand, takes it in his. Juice lets out a breath, long and shaky, and wraps his fingers around Chibs’s. 

“I stopped in Chicago for awhile, got mechanic work and lived in this run-down, shitty little motel. It was always fucking cold there, and more of the same.” Juice stops, looking for the words; Chibs can practically see them rolling around in his head. “Chicago’s a fucking armpit, man.”

~*~

(2000)

No matter the leather jacket, the nights in Chicago in September are always fucking _cold_ to JC. It can be a perfectly moderate 55 degrees, but the wind – always with the fucking wind – blowing off the lake makes him feel like he’s being cut in two. He’s taken to using JC as his name now, a strange little deference to Angie, even though it grates like glass caught in his throat every goddamn time he uses it with a john.

He’s also taken to wearing his hair in a short, narrow mohawk, another idea of hers, after he got the scalp tatts. “I know it sounds dumb, but they’ll stand out more, I swear,” she’d said, all earnest like she usually tried so hard not to be. JC had just laughed, because his appearance just wasn’t that high among his concerns. The types that came to him would come to him, regardless of his hair, lack thereof, or, as he’d come to find out, his tatts.

His first spending money in Chicago, though, goes to another tattoo, high on his right arm, of the Blessed Virgin.

It covers the scar from the gash he’d gotten from the knife he’d ended that fucker’s life with when he’d managed to get it away from JC, just for a moment.

~*~

The new garage is bigger, and it’s on the outskirts of the city; a few more bikes come through, and it’s not all that long before Jack, the manager, puts JC on them right away. What knowledge he’s not equipped with already he can find easily now, and usually quicker than anyone can put a call in.

His coworkers joke about him being some kind of genie, and he learns to laugh at cracks about rubbing him the right way.

He gets respect at the garage, though, and he’s never had that before. And it changes things, makes him walk a little taller, charge a little more.

At least, until one of his johns brings his Lexus in for an oil change. JC ignores him, but he’s aware, out of the corner of his eye, of the dude watching him. And he could probably even ignore that, but then the Lexus is parked across from the garage when he leaves one day. And then, outside his shitty motel a few mornings later.

Just like that, he’s back in his mom’s apartment, small and helpless and home alone with Ramon and the girls before their mom gets back from work. The panic overtakes him for a minute, leaves him doubled over and gasping for breath, but then he forces himself to remember he’s not Juan Carlos anymore, small and afraid. He’s not Juan, stuck in juvenile residency, trying to grow eyes in the back of his head and with a mother who only wants him for the bigger welfare check he’s worth. Nor is he Carlos, as dependent on the kindness of others as he is their kinks. He’s JC, and knows how to take care of himself.

The clerk sounds bored when JC calls the desk, and completely uninterested in the ‘suspicious vehicle’, but perks up at the offer of a benny to take care of it. It’s not really money JC can spare, but with the alternative being Stalky McCreeper - _the sound of flesh tearing, gurgling cries muffled behind JC’s hand, the smell of blood, thick and cloying in his nose_ – he lets it go, and packs his few belongings while he waits.

There’s a knock on the door about 15 minutes later, the ‘all clear’ sign, and that’s it, he’s on the move, putting Chicago in his rearview as fast as he can without drawing unwanted attention. He promises himself he’ll send Jack the rest of what he owes on his current project, a Frankenstein’d ’51 Indian Chief, someday when his life’s not shit-sideways and upside-down. He’s not sorry to see Chicago recede into the distance behind him – the place never felt like home to him – and he can feel tension bleeding away with every mile under his wheels.

This time, he doesn’t stop until he’s looking at another ocean.

~*~

(Now)

Chibs can’t help it now, reaches for Juice, pulls the lad to him. He’s not sure if he has the words for this – if anyone does – but he had them once for Fi, and so he goes deep, reaches for the things he hasn’t let himself want in so very long. “I’ve got ye,” is what he comes up with, pulling Juice close, kissing him even as he knows that that one act puts it all out there, changes everything. “I’ve got ye, and tha’ won’t happen again. Not anymore, Juicy, d’ye understand? Not anymore.”

Juice grips him, pulls him closer, and Chibs has just a moment to think how well and truly fucked this all is, right before Juice’s mouth finds his, seeking more, feeling for the truth of the words.

Chibs opens to him, lets Juice guide the kiss. He makes himself ebb the tension from his own body, push away the lingering wrath, lets go of everything but what Juice’s mouth and wandering hands are doing to him. More than anything, he wants to give the lad what he wants – _anything_ he wants – so he never feels like he has to take it, to _steal_ it.

The words to say it won’t come to him, and he’s not sure they even exist; they’re certainly not on some sodding sympathy card in a drug store. What do you say to a tale like that?

Chibs knows as well as anyone that sometimes there’s nothing to say, not with anything so trivial as words. So he stretches into Juice’s body, opens his legs and brings the lad closer. He feels Juice go with it, the lad’s hands finding his wrists, holding him to the bed. Chibs lets him, moans at the feel of Juice’s hands clamping down on him as he rolls him to his back. 

Juice slides his knee between Chibs’s legs, right up against the hardening length of his cock and Chibs arches his hips, seeking more. When Juice breaks the kiss, panting, sides heaving like he’s made his cross-country odyssey on foot, Chibs murmurs, “Whatever you want, lad, it’s yours.”

Juice pulls back a little, eyes clear but tight around the corners as he studies Chibs, and Chibs can read it, the lad thinking this is going to be pulled away from him. “Whatever you want,” he says again. “Whatever you need.”

“Fuck,” Juice whispers, broken-sounding, and drops his forehead to rest on Chibs’s.

“Not going anywhere, laddie, nowhere ye don’t want me to,” Chibs tells him, quiet and matter-of-fact, punctuated with a kiss to the corner of Juice’s mouth.

“Don’t,” Juice hisses, pulling back. His eyes have gone a little wild, and Chibs thinks he gets it; not that five stages of grief claptrap, exactly, but something not altogether removed, either. “Don’t pity me, I can’t-” he breaks the thought off abruptly, breathing ragged.

Chibs is careful to keep his arms relaxed, hands exactly where Juice placed them. “Not pity, Juicy,” he says, pushing his still-hard cock into Juice’s hip. “Not pity, but I do need you,” he whispers. “Believe me, if I pitied you, this innit where I’d be.”

Juice takes a minute for that, processing, then he lowers his head and kisses Chibs again, hard. Chibs takes it, lets him be forceful. He’s pretty sure that, what with all of the kink they’ve played at, he owes the lad a bit of running the show. 

Juice’s hand slides up his thigh, cups him through his jeans. It feels amazing, fucking spot on, but Chibs can’t help but notice that, even though Juice’s crotch is pressed firmly to his hip, there isn’t anything to feel there.

He takes a steadying breath, thinks a moment, tries to hear what Juice isn’t saying through the pleasant buzz of his body. The lad’s making all the right moves, aye, but there’s a certain detachment to them, and it occurs to Chibs that it’s entirely possible that, whether he wants it or not, Juice may not know _how_ to be in charge.

Maybe it’s more an equal footing he’s in need of for a moment. Maybe not even sex at all, but something more like intimacy.

Chibs backs out of the kiss, just a little, traces his tongue along the inside of Juice’s lower lip before ghosting his lips back along the lad’s jaw until he can nuzzle at his ear, testing.

Juice sighs out a breath, and Chibs can see his eyes close, the dark crescents of his lashes against his cheeks. He can see Juice pull himself back together, and he’s really not sure who’s talking to him when Juice husks out, “I wanna fuck you.”

So he does the only thing he knows to do – he cants his hips up, rubbing against Juice like a cat in heat as he murmurs, “Want you to fuck me, lad. Hard and slow.”

Juice shudders, breath catching, and Chibs puts his mouth right at the lad’s ear, playing at the lobe, still undulating his body, a slow grind into Juice’s warmth. “Can ye feel how hard I am, just thinkin’ abou’ it? Never lie to you about this, Juice, fucking want tha’ big cock o’ yours in me, makin’ me forget me own name.” His voice has gone rough already, brogue so thick it’ll be a wonder if Juice makes half of what he said out, but he shudders again, a full-body quake, and groans.

“Yeah, _fuck_ , that’s hot, Chibbie, your goddamn voice,” Juice pants, and Chibs thanks whatever deity’s getting an earful right now because this sounds more like the Juice he knows. Not all the way there, not yet, but close.

Better yet, his body’s getting on board, too, a bulge growing against Chibs’s own as their hips rock together, and even if this is all they end up doing tonight, it’ll still be bloody brilliant. Just so long as Juice is _here_ with him.

Juice’s hands wind in his hair, tugging just this side of painful, and Chibs groans. “Tha’s good, Juicy,” he gets out, just before Juice’s mouth covers his again. It’s a little tentative, not as sure as the hands in Chibs’s hair, but he gives himself over to it fully, pulls his knees up along Juice’s ribs so that their bodies are fully slotted together. Juice growls low in his throat at this, and his mouth against Chibs’s opens wider, teeth scraping Chibs’s bottom lip as he pulls away. Chibs moans in protest at the loss of contact, but then Juice’s hands are at his pants, working them open, hot warm skin on skin, and that’s fucking perfect.

Chibs levers his hips up to help get out of his jeans, but Juice puts a firm hand on his stomach, pressing down. “Just – just wait,” Juice mutters, staring down at Chibs’s cock where it lies, flushed and thick and long against his belly. It twitches under the scrutiny, and Juice laughs a little, leans down to drag the tip of his tongue from the base to the slit. Chibs – and, were he a different kind of man, he might be embarrassed about this later, but sod that – lets out a low fucking _whine_ at that, squirming unashamedly as Juice hovers over him, hot gusts of breath teasing over his cock. Juice grins up at him at that, gives the head another lick; Chibs wants to kiss him so badly then, he aches with it.

But Juice hasn’t said whether he can move his hands, so he leaves them where they are, watches through slitted eyes and bites his lip, sees the lad’s eyes flash dark in return.

Juice goes down then, the warm heat of his mouth enveloping Chibs totally, to the base, and Chibs can feel him swallowing, opening his throat, taking him deeper than Chibs ever thinks is possible. And instead of dwelling again on just where the lad learned that, Chibs just growls out his name and closes his eyes, works his hips in rhythm with the pace Juice is setting and Christ, he isn’t gonna last like this. “Juicy,” he stutters out, “Christ, gonna-” 

At that, Juice just hums, long and low in his throat in muffled encouragement, and Chibs comes with the vibration, Juice’s name twisting guttural from his throat, hands twisting into his own hair as the lad swallows, swallows, and then it’s done and Chibs is a panting, twitching mess in the middle of the bed.

Juice rests his chin on Chibs’s stomach, grinning up at him as he tries to pull himself back together, tries to make words and do something other than gasp. “Jesus,” he finally manages to slur out, “think ye broke me, Juicy.”

The comment earns him a light swat on the hip. It makes Chibs’s breath catch – mostly in disbelief that his body has the wherewithal to send a new bolt of desire through him – and something like fear skitters over Juice’s face, makes him start to draw away, and _fuck_ that and everyone who’s treated the lad so badly.

Chibs tilts his chin up, beckoning. “C’mere, Juicy, let me taste.” 

Juice hesitates, cautious now, and Chibs reminds himself that bringing the lad up will be more of a marathon than a sprint. “Please, Juicy.” It’s just this side of imploring; Chibs is fine with that, especially when Juice gets this look, somewhere between hopeful and smug, and crawls up his body to kiss him, wet and filthy.

Chibs moans into it, a low curl of pleasure working through him as he licks the taste of himself from Juice’s mouth, feels Juice, hard and insistent, rubbing against him. “Next time,” Chibs huffs out when they separate enough for words, “if you’re goin’a pop me one, try before I’ve shot off, aye?”

Juice laughs, kisses him again. “Never really been the one doing that part, but I love it when you do it to me.” He hesitates, but there’s still a little smile on his face when he says, “When _you_ do it.”

Chibs shifts his body closer, enjoying the lad’s warmth. “Whatever you want,” he says once again, because it bears repeating and he’ll say it until it finally sinks in to Juice’s thick skull, even knowing full well that his own brain isn’t really back on line yet. “We do this how you want it, Juicy.”

He’s more than fine with how things have been, with guiding the lad, giving him the kink and the rough play he’s asked for – hell, begged for, more than once – but he needs for Juice to know that it doesn’t have to be that way all the time, that he’s more than happy to be had. He wants to slide a hand between them, to where Juice’s cock is still a persistent weight against him, but settles for a lazy, dirty twist of his hips instead. “Think you said something about fucking me, yeah? Can we get on with tha’ now?”

Juice’s eyes flutter briefly, teeth working at his lower lip as he makes an aborted thrust into the contact, a fine tremor running through his frame. It’s a lovely sight, made more so when his eyes open again, pupils blown out, the black of them near eclipsing the iris. It’s predatory, and it’s a really good look on him. 

“Since you asked so nicely,” he rasps, sitting up on his heels and pulling his shirt over his head, “I guess maybe we can.” Chibs watches him raptly, taking in the play of muscle under smooth olive skin as the lad leans back down, hands going to the hem of Chibs’s shirt, working it up his torso. Juice lets his knuckles tease over the skin as he bares it, and Chibs’s muscles jump, chasing him. When the shirt’s bound up around his shoulders, Juice raises his brows at him. “Little help, here?”

Chibs shrugs at him as best he can, cocking his own brow. “Could just leave it there, if ye want. “You’re the one tol’ me not to move ‘em.”

Juice growls at this, and Chibs sees it play out over his face – the idea of being totally in charge, leaving Chibs helpless in surrender, not even cuffs to hold him. “Leave it,” he says shortly, sliding back down Chibs’s body, tugging his jeans and boxers the rest of the way off. “This is all I need.”

A quiver of excitement runs through Chibs at that, and then Juice’s mouth is moving across his hole, tongue licking in, opening him up and it feels like every vein in his body is on fire, nerves singing, wanting. He lets out a sound that would make a whore blush, his whole body arcing into it. “Oh, god _damn_ it, Juicy, tha’ feels good.”

Juice makes a noise, almost a snarl, and the vibration in that tender area nearly brings him off the bed entirely, like there’s a current running from his hole to his cock to his lizard brain, and someone – Juice – just switched the voltage on to high. But there’s that hand at his stomach again, pinning him, and all Chibs can do is wrap his fingers in the pillowcase and thump his head against it, panting and cursing.

Then Juice’s mouth is gone, and Chibs open his mouth to yell – something, a protest – only to see Juice staring at him hotly before placing two fingers to Chibs’s lips. “Get ‘em good and wet, Chibbie, gonna put them in you, open you up for me.”

Chibs full-on squirms at that, at being laid so bare with the only points of contact Juice’s knees between his thighs and fingers at his lips. He makes the most of it, though, holding Juice’s eyes as he sucks the lad’s fingers deep, making noises he almost doesn’t recognize as coming from himself.

By the time the fingers are gone from his lips, he’s so wrecked that he’s almost protesting it until the fingers press against his entrance again. Juice doesn’t wait, either, isn’t in the mood for slow and three fingers push past the rim and inside, all the way and crook unerringly to that nerve-rich spot inside of Chibs. His whole world lights up, sensation sparking up almost past what he can handle, legs opening further and hips slamming toward the feeling. 

“Fuck,” he hears Juice grunt, past the thundering in his ears, and there’s a flurry of movement, the sound of a drawer opening and closing and a bottle clicking open. “Oh, c’mon,” Chibs urges, long out of patience, “just do it, c’mon!”

“Yeah,” Juice responds, voice guttural, almost feral, something Chibs has never heard from him before. It makes a whole new level of want flare in him even as Juice lines up and presses in, one long sure stroke, barely pausing to let Chibs adjust.

God, it burns, almost too much, and Chibs has to force himself to bear down to the intrusion rather than tense against it. It’s been forever, not since – Chibs quashes the thought, throws his head back and gives himself over to the sweet ache instead. Something gives him away, though, some hitch in his breathing, and Juice stills. The tendons in his neck stand out in sharp relief against the tightness in his jaw as he stares down, eyes wild. “O-okay? Shit, Chibs, I can’t-”

Chibs glares, shoves his hips up. The resulting surge of sensation makes his hips jerk, brings his legs to Juice’s hips, and sweet Jesus, he’s actually hard again. “Ye don’ get a move on, Juice, I’ll flip us over and make ye,” he threatens, though the crack in his voice gives him away.

“Big talk from the guy that can’t move his hands,” Juice taunts, but he’s moving before Chibs has to break his hands free and remind him that they’ve been kept out of the way by Chibs’s consent and bloody willpower, not bindings; then too, given the state the lad’s brought him to, he’s not at all certain it’d be an effective gambit. Juice sets a hard and fast rhythm that has Chibs writhing, noises sliding from his throat that he’s pretty sure he’ll deny making later. They get Juice moving faster, though, harder, flesh slapping flesh as the headboard bangs against the wall in a constant backbeat.

Chibs is pretty sure this might kill him, and he’s equally sure that that’s just fine as Juice ducks his head, sinks his teeth into Chibs’s shoulder and goes rigid, his muffled, ragged cursing going on and on in Chibs’s ear as he comes in warm spurts. Chibs tightens around him in reaction and Juice cries out like it hurts, then laughs weakly against Chibs’s damp shoulder. “You feel too goddamn good,” Juice says, voice gone to gravel right against Chibs’s ear. “Oh, fuck, you feel goddamn good.”

All he can do is call Juice’s name softly, near-mindless with how good this is, how much better than he remembered. Need still judders through him, wracking his body with tremors, making his hips buck as he tries to fuck himself on Juice’s still-softening cock. “Juice, Juicy, fuck,” he babbles, “need-”

“I gotcha, Chibbie,” Juice cuts him off, pulling out with a wince, whether for himself or the sound of Chibs’s grunt, he’s not sure and could care less because in a blink, Juice slithers down his body, wrapping one sure hand around Chibs’s aching cock. Just a few strokes would be more than enough, tension in his low back just barely this side of contained, but then – god fucking bless that ambidexterity, hallelujah – Juice slips three fingers back inside his come-slick passage, zeroing in on his prostate at the same time as he ducks his head down to close his mouth over one ball where it’s tucked up tight to the base his shaft and _sucks_.

It slams through Chibs like a freight train, and he’s just _gone_ , crying out, every muscle in his body gone seizure-tight, head filled with white noise. When he drifts back down, Juice is swiping his fingers through the mess on Chibs’s belly, symbols that look like lightning. His other hand rubs lazily at Chibs’s flank, soothing, while he watches him with something akin to wonder.

Chibs shudders one last time, eyes closing hard at the aftershock, and hears Juice laugh, low and content and full of something that Chibs doesn’t hear from him enough – pure masculine alpha-ness. “That was fuckin’ amazin’, Juicy,” he manages. “I haven’t… well, it’s been a long fucking time.”

He can feel Juice studying him even with his eyes closed, trying to get his breathing back on track, but the kid doesn’t do that ‘Juice’ thing that Chibs had sort of expected him to and immediately start trying to caretake, doesn’t ask a million questions that Chibs doesn’t really want right now anyway, unfair though that might be.

Instead, he kisses Chibs’s mouth briefly, then pulls himself from the bed and pads down the short hallway that connects the bedroom to the bathroom. Chibs hears him running water, then he’s crawling back in bed and Chibs twitches as a warm washcloth is wiped over his stomach.

Juice laughs a little at that. “Feel good?” he asks, voice still that dark timbre that hits Chibs low in the gut, and all he can do is groan in affirmative. 

“Good thing I got nowhere to be tomorrow, lad, because I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna be able to get the fuck outta th’ bed.” He opens his eyes to see Juice’s grin and it’s there, but distracted, and Chibs gets that Juice isn’t done yet, has committed to putting it all out there in the open for Chibs to know, to do with as he wishes.

That burns his languor away, makes him sit back up against the pillows and reach for his cigarettes. He passes one to Juice, who takes it with a nod and settles, cross-legged and facing Chibs by his hip, though he’s averting his eyes again as he picks up his story.

 

~*~

(2004)

JC is just barely 21 when he sets eyes on the Pacific, and he’s too tired to see anything but a giant body of water that’s probably infested with sharks. But the sand is still warm from the sun in the approaching dusk, and it feels good to just _rest_ a moment. 

A soft voice awakens him some untold time later, an older lady cop who tells him he can’t sleep there on the beach. The sternness in her face softens a little when he nods dumbly at her and stands up to brush himself off. “Sorry, new to the area.” His voice rasps out like loose gravel on a rutted road, rough from disuse. He hasn’t spoken an unnecessary word since Chicago.

She – Benitez, he thinks the tag says – frowns slightly, though it seems more directed at herself than at him. Probably some ‘do not engage’ protocol. JC does his best to look harmless. 

After a moment of consideration, she jerks her head in the direction of her cruiser, holding up placating hands when he balks; he’s been careful, so careful, not a Vice note on his record, and there’s no way she could know. Her voice breaks through his panic, though, calming, if slightly exasperated. “Just gonna get you a map, sir, show you some options. Shelters, hostels. Places to crash that aren’t here.”

She eyes him a little longer when he just nods again, and, fiddling with the papers in her hands, asks, “Got anything you’re good at, kid?”

He snorts back laughter and, instead of ‘fucking random dudes for cash,’ says, “I’m pretty good with an engine. And computers.” 

She studies him another long, drawn-out moment, sizing him up. “I got a brother-in-law in Weed,” she finally comes out with. “Has a garage, needs a mechanic. He won’t put up with bullshit, though. No drugs, no drama.”

JC knows that the look on his face has to be pure, stupid gratitude as he promises none of either, and that’s how he ends up working at Benito’s Garage.

He’s still there three years later when the scary dude on the gorgeous, fucked-up Harley comes rolling in to town. It’s a sweet little life he’s made here, complete with an apartment and a fucking cat, and he’s good with the engines and good with the computers, the weed supply is as awesome as the town’s name would suggest, plentiful and top-grade, and, most important, he doesn’t have to hook anymore. He uses some of the time that he doesn’t have to put in on the streets to go to the gym and work on growing into himself, burying the slightness that’s plagued his entire life under layers of muscle aided by the work at the garage. He has friends here, likes the guys he works with and feels liked in return; he’s even taken to hanging out with them after work, going to bike shows and gun shows and the firing range near the garage.

Still, old instincts die hard and there’s something about this guy that puts him on edge.

JC is the one they always give the bikes to, so he saunters up to the dude before he’s even checked in with the girl at the desk, says, “Wow, you lay it down?” even as he runs reverential hands along the bike’s smooth lines.

The guy doesn’t even bother with an eyeroll, just says, “Ya think?” before pulling his wallet out. “Nobody works on her but me.”

And JC gets that, he does, but Benito doesn’t have all that many hard and fast rules to follow, and this is one of them. He shrugs at the guy, casual. “Benito don’t work that way, man. I do the bike work, but I’ll let you hang while I do.”

The guy glowers at him, and JC gives him a blank face and a shrug, even though the hair on the back of his neck is prickling with unease. It’s not the tapestry of ink adorning the guy’s skin, or his Sons of Anarchy cut, which Juice would be dying to ask about were it not for the self-preservation alarms that have him on alert, just something… off.

Still, he’s itching to get his hands on the Harley, and antagonizing the guy won’t help anyone, especially not himself. “I’ll show you my girl, and you can be the judge. You don’t think the work’s good, I’ll give you the number for our best wrecker, no harm, no foul.”

After a long, considering moment, the guy nods. “Okay.”

JC relaxes, just a little; it feels like he passed some kind of test. Jerking his chin at the guy, he leads him over to his no-longer-Frankenstein’d, near-fully restored ’51 Indian Chief, running a hand over her fondly. He’s not surprised by the quiet snort and raised brows; he knows she appears more decorative than useful, even a little fruity, but what d’you want for essentially free? She’s a classic, for God’s sake.

When he says as much, the guy’s brows creep even higher, but he starts circling the Indian slowly, looking for flaws. As always, JC jumps to her defense.

“I took her on as a project in Armpit City, and when I had to get out quick, she carried me through a couple years and several thousand miles of hard use ‘til we landed here, and ran like a dream. We took care of each other.” The words are defiant, more so than his usual spiel, but he stands his ground and he could swear the guy’s lips twitch. 

Another test, then.

JC scrutinizes him, debating, before pulling his key out and climbing astride, giving the engine a good rev. This strange, off-putting stranger isn’t getting his time and effort if he can’t respect the Indian.

It’s tiny – shit, miniscule – when the guy nods, but JC is even more certain of the lip twitch this time, and thinks he’s not entirely insane to take them as signs of approval. He doesn’t try too hard to stomp the smug out of his own grin as he shuts his baby down and gives her a final pat.

“Okay,” the guy says, gesturing at his own bike.

“Quite the conversationalist, aren’t you,” JC mutters under his breath. The guy just looks confused for a moment, and a little bit impatient. “Right,” JC says, louder this time, professional, “let’s have a look.”

The guy hangs back, watches as JC runs patient and respectful hands along the lines of the bike. He keeps his mouth shut, not even nodding as JC walks him through it, ending with, “It’s mostly cosmetic, but I’ll bet you’ve got some fucking serious road rash somewhere.”

And at that, the guy finally makes an actual expression on his face. It’s sort of a grimace, but JC realizes it’s probably as close to a smile as this guy gets, and it reminds JC uncomfortably of stepdad #2.

The guy holds a gloved hand out. “Happy Lowman.”

~*~

(Now)

Chibs has faced any number of uncomfortable situations, some worse than death, without twitching, but that bit of information makes him startle. It snaps his heavy eyelids open wide and draws him up off the pillows, something he wouldn’t have imagined himself capable of a fucked-out short while ago. “The fuck?” he splutters.

Juice laughs a little. “Yeah. Gonna listen to the rest of it?”

Chibs nods, still shell-shocked, fucked up as that is given all that’s been revealed tonight. Juice just looks like he’s enjoying the speechlessness, the little shit.

~*~

(Then)

JC spends the next few days working on the Harley, with an ever-present dark crow at his shoulder. It takes Happy two full days to relax, to stop questioning every tool that JC pulls from the kit, but by the time JC is hammering out the last of the details, Happy is creepily flirting with the desk chick and all but ignoring JC.

The day JC finally hands the keys back, Happy takes them in a gloved hand, bill settled, and asks what JC has kinda been waiting for. “The fuck you doing here anyway, man? You’re better with a goddamn wrench than most of the guys I ride with, and the dudes in the mother charter run a fucking garage.”

And JC almost thinks better of it, but gives his pat response. “Well, it beats blowing dudes for blow.”

It’s a mistake. He knows it’s a mistake as soon as the words are out of his mouth, when they’re hanging in the air between them like fucking napalm.

The thing is, people usually laugh at the response, all ‘whatever, you got secrets, didn’t mean to poke in your business,’ but nothing about Happy is ‘most people’. He just stares at JC, impassive, which wouldn’t usually be much cause for concern; at worst, it tends to mean the person behind the look thinks he’s a schmuck on the lam and that they should make a point of checking that their wallets are intact. But Happy, he has, like, _degrees_ of impassive, and this degree says that JC is not fooling him, and possibly that he’s running through scenarios for hiding the body.

JC goes still, the utter absence of movement of a small prey animal trying to avoid detection by a rattler, and he hates himself for the weakness. For all he’d like to think he’s won Happy over about as much as it’s possible to do so, he’s still pretty much an unknown quantity now in possession of information JC never, ever wants shared.

It’s an agonizing few moments – maybe only seconds, fuck if JC knows – pinned under that calculating gaze before Happy even seems to breathe. “You like dick.”

Somehow, it’s neither question nor statement, and JC scrambles for a response. “Dunno that ‘like’ is the word for it,” he hedges. It’s more truth – at this point he’s pretty much avoiding sex altogether, finds it too tangled up in bad memories and means to ends to find the energy for when engines and computers are so much simpler.

He’s not at all confident that Happy will accept that as an answer, but the idea of giving up any more information he doesn’t absolutely have to leaves him cold. “I was a kid, it kept me out of the system,” is what he settles on by way of elaboration, willing himself not to cross his arms.

Happy makes a noncommittal sound, not looking _at_ JC so much as through him, far away and unreachable before giving one of his barely discernible nods. While JC tries not to do something truly idiotic, like hyperventilate, Happy reaches in his pocket and pulls out a scrap of paper, holding it out like – probably not an olive branch, but maybe an invitation – like he’s still weighing whether JC is worthy of receiving it. “This is Jax Teller’s number. He’s mother charter, and who you talk to about the Club’s public events, becoming a Friend. He likes you, maybe you get a shot.”

JC takes the scrap gingerly, his day suddenly looking supernova levels of brighter. Happy gives him one more significant look once he’s seated on his bike, one that can only be interpreted as warning. “The Sons ain’t in the business of prospecting fags,” he states, like the grass is green, the sky blue, and the sun will come up tomorrow before starting the bike’s engine with a throaty growl. 

JC nods, but Happy’s not really paying attention anymore, too wrapped up in the sound of his girl running sweet beneath him. “See you ‘round, brother,” he yells over his shoulder as he peels out, leaving JC with the distinct feeling of his world having tilted on its axis once again.

~*~

(Now)

Chibs is still a little hung up on whole Happy thing. He knows the man well enough to consider him trustworthy in most things even if he’d rather not know the details; he also knows that playing cards with him is an exercise in burning money. 

If the Sons aren’t in the habit of ‘prospecting fags’ – which is true, though perhaps by default as much as design – Happy is not in the business of just lending a hand to strangers, and certainly not with no immediate gain to himself on the table.

Chibs can’t help but wonder about that; Juice must have made an impression. Something hot and possessive tightens his chest, and he hates that he’s even having the thought with Juice right here next to him, spilling all his secrets. He’d warned Chibs it would change things.

But it hasn’t, really. While it’s hard to get a read on what Happy’s really into, sexually – one of those things Chibs doesn’t need details about – he’s pretty certain that Juice wouldn’t have left it out of the narrative, had that been part of their interaction. Furthermore, it’s history, before the Club, before this ‘thing’ between them.

History doesn’t matter, but for the effects it has on the present.

Chibs shakes loose that train of thought, redirects his attention. “I’m guessing you put the number to use, then,” he teases gently, and he really wants to know what comes next. Jax hadn’t offered up much in the way of information back then, who the kid was or where he’d come from.

Juice smiles, and Chibs is relieved to see that it’s coming easier. “It took me a week or so to work up the nerve,” he admits, scrubbing a hand over his mohawk, sheepish, and Chibs can’t help but smile back, even though his throat’s gone a little thick. Juice doesn’t have to say it was because he’d convinced himself that it was too good to be true.

~*~

(2007)

Jax Teller is instantly suspicious of JC when he calls to ask if there are any public events he can come check out. “How the fuck did you get this number?”

JC stutters for a moment, sideswiped by the idea that this is a personal, or at least Club-only number. He just manages to blurt out “Uh, Happy Lowman gave it to me? I worked on his bike,” before Jax gets a chance to hang up on him, probably while planning on getting new digits, ASAP.

There’s a weighted pause before the words come, thick with disbelief. “Happy. Let you work on his bike.”

JC thinks this is a good sign, something he can work with. “Yeah, he laid it down, seemed pleased with the job. We talked a little while I was working on it.”

“Well,” Jax finally says another long moment later, “I guess you’d better come check shit out, then.” He rattles off a date and location, then hangs up before JC can get another word in. JC’s pretty sure the only things that would have come out of his mouth would make him sound like a ridiculous fanboy, so that’s okay.

~*~

He puts in for the vacation days he’s saved up and gives a conditional notice to Benito. “I’m not back in two weeks, I’m probably staying gone.”

Benito frowns and takes the forms reluctantly. “You sure, man? Be great if you’d stick around.”

And that’s something that JC’s still not really used to, being acknowledged, so he tries to tamp down his excitement – and anxiety – over what he’s about to do. “Yeah. Just not used to being in one place so long, y’know?”

Benito nods slowly, holds a hand out for JC to shake. “Good luck, then. Always be a place here for you if you want it.”

JC means it with every fiber of his being when he thanks him.

~*~

The real downside to putting Weed in his rearview, other than the uncharted waters, is giving his cat away. He doesn’t travel with anything that won’t fit on his bike, and while having a cat at all was more that the thing turned up one day and wouldn’t leave than anything else, he’s been glad of the company and doesn’t want to subject it to traveling at speed in a crate with only a haphazard perch at best.

Also, the idea of PETA coming after him is not one he relishes, the crazy fucks.

Once he’s all packed, he hands Ambrose over to his neighbor, Samantha. Her little girl Justine has always liked the furball, and JC knows they’ll take good care of him. Ambrose stares at him reproachfully, anyway. “It’s for the best, buddy,” JC tells him, feeling like a goof and definitely not tearing up. “They probably have pit bulls and shit where I’m going, no place for you at all.”

Ambrose gives him one last disdainful look, then squirms out of Samantha’s arms and stalks away, into the apartment. “Take care, JC.” Samantha smiles then, and he nods.

That’s that, then.

~*~

He rides into Charming a day before the meeting, and manages to locate the cheap, extended-stay joint Jax had indicated in a text. It appears to be clean and well-kept, which puts it several notches above most of the places JC has crashed before. When he rings the bell at the desk, it takes a moment for the clerk to materialize, and JC gazes around idly, trying to get a feel for his surroundings.

“Can I help you?” a feminine voice asks, sounds almost pleased, and JC turns to ask if there’s a single available for the week, but the words die in his throat when he gets a look at her. “Sorry to keep you waiting, I’ve got a Chem test tomorrow and this place has been dead, so I figured I’d get some study time.”

She’s cute, if not a stunner. Wavy, light brown hair, green eyes, a smattering of freckles on a button nose, and what JC can see over the counter would be entirely satisfactory, if physical attributes were that much of a hook for him. What brings him up short is her smile, directed at him like he’s the best thing she’s seen all day, and so eerily reminiscent of Angelina his heart seizes a little in his chest.

“Hey,” he hears, distantly, feels warmth at his hand, tentative, realizes he’s gripping the edge of the counter with white knuckles to keep himself upright, that she’s touching him, trying to get him to let go, maybe, “you okay?”

“Long ride,” he answers dumbly, not even registering that she’s come around the counter until he’s sitting in the lobby chair with her kneeling in front of him, looking so worried he kind of wants to cry.

“Just sit here a minute, I’ll bring out the paperwork for you to sign,” she tells him, letting her hand pat at JC’s thigh as she stands, and Jesus Christ, how the hell did that make him hard?

She’s not Angie, he reminds himself, over and over as he watches her, Happy’s warning looming large in his mind. It wouldn’t have to be anything major – he’s pretty sure that casual is just his speed, in fact. She fusses over him while he gives her the information for the paperwork, and he can’t take his eyes off of the nametag that his vision’s cleared enough to read.

Evangeline. 

It’s all he can do not to shake with the turmoil of conflicted emotions, but somehow, he makes it through on autopilot until she presses the key in his palm. “Hey, uh. I’m off at seven. There’s not much to see here, but I could show you around a little, if you want.” She blushes, just the tiniest bit, when she makes the offer, and JC is still a little gobsmacked and taking her up on it before he realizes the words have left his mouth.

“I’ll have you back in time for your studying,” he finds himself smiling, but only half-teasing. He knows if you care enough to bring your books to work, you care enough to want to be good at whatever it is in them.

Evangeline – fuck, Eva, maybe she’ll go by Eva, he just can’t bring himself to ask – winks at him, emboldened by the lack of rejection. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind if you didn’t.”

~*~

He showers quickly, just to get the road grime off, then stretches out on the surprisingly comfortable bed, knowing he won’t do more than doze. He’s back up by 6:45, pops a Ritalin from his stash because he always seems to put his foot in his mouth a little less with amphetamine buzzing under his skin. He heads to the office, hangs out and smart-asses while Eva – and she corrected Evangeline quickly – does a register count with some nerdy, pimply teenager that keeps looking at JC like he’s gonna rob the place. JC plays into it, picking up stuff on the counter and putting it down, being just a little loud until Eva’s obviously struggling not to laugh.

Outside, she punches him on the arm. “That was mean!”

JC laughs and dances away from her. “Yeah, and?”

She scowls at him some more, though he can see her biting the inside of her cheek against a smile. “Weren’t you ever some gawky kid that people liked to fuck around with? That registration desk is his little stump, and you just went and pissed all over it.”

Her words make his tongue tangle in his mouth, trying not to spit out something about how no, he usually got actually fucked, thanks, that he knows she doesn’t deserve. “I’m not into watersports,” is what finally trips out, and he kind of wants to die, because smooth move, ex-lax.

He hadn’t thought he would suck quite so badly at this.

Eva stares at him in shock, and JC can feel his face burning and seriously, the ground could really just do him a solid and open beneath him right now, but then she wrinkles her nose and laughs. It even sounds genuine. “Well, that’s good to know, I guess.”

Anxiety JC hadn’t even realized he was carrying slides off his shoulders like water, and he feels himself smile tentatively. “You, ah, don’t scare easy,” is all he can think of to say.

She waggles her brows at him. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for guys with no game.”

It’s JC’s turn to give her an outraged face. It doesn’t matter if she has a point, he has to defend himself against that kind of slight. “I’ve got game. I’ve got lots of game, more game than one person should be able to hold – ”

“See, I’m hearing all of these words, but there’s just no showing happening. Show, don’t tell, ever hear of it?”

JC has no idea what possesses him then, makes him grab his crotch and leer, “I’ve got your show and tell right here.” It’s instinctive, maybe, and it makes him want to throw up a little, because this is not then, and Eva is not a john.

Eva just laughs at him, eyes twinkling. “Thank you for proving my point.” He doesn’t even have a defense for himself anymore; all he can think to do is shuffle his feet and curse the Ritalin for being no goddamned help whatsoever. She takes him by surprise when she sidles up under his arm, body a soft line of heat against his that actually feels good, no threat, no job. It sort of takes his breath away before she even gets her mouth to his ear. “Show and tell time later, mmmm?”

JC actually misses a step at that, and has to concede defeat to Eva’s superior gamesmanship.

Really, he’ll get right on that just as soon as his brain starts cooperating again.

He lets Eva show him around a little, and she’s right – there’s not much to see. JC is more than okay with that, though – he likes to be places where he couldn’t set up shop if he wanted to.

~*~

(Now)

Chibs can't help it. He doesn't want to interrupt, but he can't keep himself from reaching out and giving the nape of the lad's neck a gentle squeeze. "Muppet," he declares, trying to mask the affection, the faint jealously of status-currently-undefined Eva with his best deadpan. Juice just flips him off and continues the story.

~*~

(Then)  
They do the whole _thing_ – after she’s shown him what little there is to see in Charming, Eva directs him to a small Italian restaurant that has the best lasagna he’s tasted since leaving New York. When Eva drops him off at the motel – she doesn’t like bikes, so they took her car – he even leans in and kisses her goodnight at his door. Closed-mouth, chaste, everything he’s never had.

When he pulls back, she’s smiling up at him, a little bemused. “You really are different, aren’t you?” she says, and for the first time, those words in that order don’t sound like a bad thing.

~*~

The next morning, JC is so nervous that he decides five different times that he isn’t going to the meeting and, when he pulls the Indian into the parking lot of the garage that Jax directed him to, he still isn’t really sure how he got there. The first person that he sees when he hangs his helmet on the handle bar is Happy, though, who tips a beer bottle in his direction from across the lot. 

And he’s somehow okay then.

When a young blond guy comes swaggering up to him, hand out, the words, “I’m Jax Teller. You’re JC, right?” on his lips, the smile on JC’s mouth feels natural.

Jax loves the Indian, is full of questions about where JC started with her and how he got her to where she is now, and there’s honest appreciation in his eyes when he says, “It’s good work, man.”

They’re still talking about the bike when an older guy saunters up, sunglasses firmly in place and leather Sons of Anarchy cut looking like a part of him. “Jacky-boy, who’s this?” and his voice is loud, big, full of brogue and beer. He also has a wicked, fascinating set of scars stretching back from each corner of his mouth. “We takin’ new prospects?” 

Jax looks at JC, eyes appraising, and says, “Yeah, we haven’t had anybody to do shit work in a while now.”

JC has never felt so much a part of something, and can’t help the little thrill that goes through him when Jax flicks his gaze to the older guy and smirks. “Says he’s good with computers, too, Chibs.”

“Oh, thank Christ,” the guy – Chibs – exclaims, pressing his hands together in front of him as though in prayer at Mass. “Welcome to the Club, laddie, follow me and allow me to make your wildest dreams come true.”

~*~

(Now)

“You bloody little shit, I did not,” Chibs laughs, cuffing Juice lightly on the shoulder. He just leans into the touch and makes a grab at Chibs’s cigarette. 

“Don’t front, man, you know you thought I was manna from heaven when Jax mentioned I could help with the computers.”

“Seems to me I got pulled off by some Irish business and didn’t get back until we voted on you,” Chibs deflects, remembering all too well his relief that he wouldn’t have to muddle around with the infernal machines any longer.

Juice waves a negligent hand. “Whatever. My story, man.” He sounds aggrieved, but rests his head on Chibs’s shoulder nonetheless, settles down for one last smoke, a few more words.

~*~

(2007)

Chibs’s phone rings the moment they step foot in what JC guesses is the clubhouse and he hurries off with a “Sorry, lad, customers,” and a jerk of his head to Happy. “Got McKeevy on the line, Hap, show the prospect around, will ye?”

With that, Chibs is gone, and Happy ambles over. “Guess you’re in for now,” he says, and JC is once again reminded of the man’s words to him back in Weed.

“Yeah, for now,” he agrees, uncomfortable with the knowledge that Happy can ruin him, if he so chooses. But Happy gave him the number in the first place, and that has to mean something.

If Happy picks up on any of that, he doesn’t let on, just leads JC over to the bar and pours them both a shot of Cuervo Gold. “Welcome, Juice,” he intones, “to not fucking it up.”

JC’s discomfiture must show on his face before he takes the shot and it sets his insides on fire; his next clear recollection is Happy patting his back and telling him to work a lot on his handling of hard liquor. “Not much of a drinker,” he wheezes – pills and blow have always been more his thing – before remembering that he’d had a question before his tequila death. “Juice?”

Happy shrugs. “Why have two syllables when you could have one? It’s wasteful.”

JC – Juice – can only stare at him through watery eyes and roll the idea around in his head, glossing right over Happy’s own two-syllable handle. A nickname, given in a moment of something like camaraderie, rather than a john telling him how to take it, or Angie poking gentle fun at him.

Maybe it’s the burn of the tequila, but he likes it, likes that it puts him one step farther away from who he used to be. “Okay then,” he finally says. “I could use a new name.”

Happy just pours him another shot. “That’s the spirit, prospect.”

~*~

The bed that Juice comes to in the next morning is unfamiliar, but the sheets are clean and the mattress is soft. He rolls over, groaning as his head thuds with the movement, and makes a commitment to himself to never, ever do shots with Happy again. He also has a faint memory of the guy with the accent and the scars – he thinks he remembers him being called Chibs - coming back at some point, and he’s pretty sure that that’s when the amber liquor started flowing, but there is absolutely nothing after that. He rolls himself out of bed, head pounding and mouth dry, sees a toilet through the one open door in the room and stumbles to it. He’s pretty sure that he’s gonna be sick, but it passes and he stands on watery knees to take long gulps from the sink faucet instead.

Once he’s fairly sure that he’s human again, he wanders back out to the bed, sits down and takes stock. He’s wearing a black combat boot that he recognizes as his own – the other foot is bare – sweatpants that he’s never seen in his life, and a black t-shirt – inside out - that he’s fairly sure Happy had had on at some point… well, earlier, as he’s not even sure what day it is right now. He has no idea where his jeans or wallet are, but his smokes are on the dresser, so he lights one – and Christ, it tastes like stale dogshit – and drags himself out. 

He finds the clubhouse proper fairly quickly through blind luck, but he hesitates at the door for a long minute, half sure that either it’s going to be empty and he’ll be left to slink away or – worse – it’ll be full of guys who’ll tell him to leave, and he’ll have to make the long ride back to Weed, to the every-day-is-the-same life there. He struggles with it for a minute, then realizes that Ambrose is the bright spot in that scenario, and pushes through the door.

~*~

He stands there, dazed, cries of “Prospect!” singing in his ears. Chibs – he’s pretty sure, anyway – and Happy are holding up shot glasses in his direction – and fucking really, how long was he out? – and Jax is grinning in front of him, holding up a leather cut. “We voted last night, after you passed out.”

There’s nothing on it except the Prospect rocker and MC patch on the back, and a Prospect patch on the front over the left pocket, but Juice accepts it happily. 

Jax pulls him into a rough dude-hug, wraps his hand behind Juice’s head and tugs his ear close. “This means something,” he says, low. “Your blood family, your home town – all that shit moves back a row. Once you’re patched, the members are your family, this charter is your home. All you are now is the Club, and the Sons always come first, no matter what, and we’ll always have your back in return.”

JC – Juice, it’s _Juice_ now, JC is dead and buried and gone with the others, new life, new identity – thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.

~*~

(Now)

Chibs finds himself nodding along with this last bit of the story; he remembers at least part of that night better than Juice, and tells him as much, does a little story-telling of his own. 

~*~

(2007)

The business with McKeevey, finalizing the latest shipment details, takes most of the day, and Juice – JC then, he supposes – is already well on the way to knackered across the bar from Happy, who’s lining up more shots. That’s a confusing enough sight to bring Chibs up short. Happy is who they borrow when prospects need terrorizing; playing bartender for them, let alone before they’ve even been voted in, is really not his style. Bobby catches him taking in the scene and shakes his head mournfully. “Gonna have some work to do on this one, can’t hold his liquor for shit.”

“I miss the vote?” Chibs asks, somewhat befuddled.

“Nah,” Tig answers, coming up on Chibs’s shoulder and watching the prospective prospect with a hint of suspicion. Chibs figures it’s a fair guess that Tig won’t accept this JC lad until Clay consents to him as a prospect himself. “But it’s about time we had another prospect, and we can just give him the boot if he fucks up, right? Happy’s been pouring tequila in him all day, and when do we need an excuse to party?”

Chibs’s reply gets pre-empted by the thud of JC hitting the floor in a heap and the resulting howls of laughter. “Prospect down!” Jax shouts, and Happy throws his arms up in the air in a rare and bizarre display of victory. 

Chibs feels like he’s stepped into the Twilight Zone.

Jax and Happy set about gathering the lad up and manhandling him back towards the dorm, presumably to pour him into a bed, and Chibs takes the opportunity to help himself to two of the shots left on the bar while everyone’s waiting for Clay to turn up and call them to Church. It seems as though the vote is going to be a formality, given the jovial atmosphere, and Chibs… Chibs is looking forward to having the lad around. His ride – an Indian, not an everyday bike, either – certainly indicates he knows his way around a bike better than the average Tom, Dick or Harry. If he’s remotely as good with computers, which is something the Club needs even more than another grease monkey, then this lad could be golden. With Jax giving the tentative go-ahead already, and fucking _Happy_ apparently taking a shine to him, yeah, Chibs would put money on this vote being a formality.

If there’s anything more, he’s not examining it too closely, yet.

Clay picks that moment to make his entrance and call them in for Church, and Chibs hangs back, waiting for Jax and Happy to reemerge. They come back from the dorm area sniggering like a pair of hooligans on a narrow miss from the cops. “He’s gonna be so fucking confused,” Jax chuckles, giving Happy a last thump on the shoulder before they make their way to the table. Happy isn’t voting, being SAMTAC and visiting on a run from up north, but takes his customary spot in the corner to observe.

“Alright,” Clay barks, bringing them to order with the rap of the gavel, “Jax found a puppy, we need a prospect. Jax?”

Jax shrugs, dragging a hand through his hair. “Look, this is a little unusual; I know we generally get our prospects from guys who have been hanging around a while and who we have a pretty good feel for already before even thinking of prospecting them, but this JC guy – Juice – comes… highly recommended.”

Chibs wonders what that’s about; nearly all Sons mechanical work takes place in charter or charter-approved garages, and they all know everyone already. No one has mentioned a JC, or anyone who would have those initials. Jax is the only one who knows anything about computers other than the tiny amount Chibs does, and between the two of them, they can almost get one to print invoices. 

Almost. 

Somehow, Chibs can’t see Jacky-Boy with a lot of connections in the hacking community, or whatever they like to call themselves.

“Who?” Tig asks, but Jax just shakes his head.

“Doesn’t matter other than he’s a member in good standing.” 

Chibs can feel Tig tensing beside him, readying some kind of argument, but Clay, surprisingly enough, is the one to wave him off, and Jax continues when Tig backs off with ill grace. “He’s got one hell one of a bike that he’s been restoring the past few years, and she sounds as good anything you’d want to hear, so we can use him in the garage. He also says he’s good with computers, and we all know that’s something we’ve been needing, badly.”

There’s a general murmur of assent around the table.

“Can he shoot?” Tig is still sulking a little, though Chibs knows some of it’s for show. For whom is a mystery, as the lad’s not in here to be intimidated.

“Didn’t ask. If he can’t, we’ll teach him, if he doesn’t wanna learn, he goes,” Jax offers, and Clay nods in agreement. Chibs is glad Jacky-Boy’s in that seat; there’s usually about a 50/50 or slightly better of Clay listening when he suggests a more moderate approach to something.

“Alright, then. All in favor?”

Everyone’s hand goes up, and SAMCRO gets a new prospect.

~*~

(Now)

“Don’t remember a whole lot after that, just that you missed your own vote-in party and slept through most of the next day,” Chibs teases when Juice ducks his head against his shoulder, trying to hide his red cheeks.

“They fucked with my clothes, didn’t they?” 

It takes Chibs a moment to work out what the question is, muffled as it is against his shoulder, and he’s not entirely sure how to answer, now. He’d always thought that was the case, but now he’s remembering Happy, and how Happy hadn’t been on any of the couches or the pool table or bar or anywhere else when Chibs had gotten up himself. He had come out of the bathroom a moment later and tipped his head at Chibs by way of greeting, though, so it probably didn’t mean anything.

He shoves the thought away – no sense dwelling on it – and slides his hand over the ink between Juice’s shoulders, just enjoying the warm skin under his palm. “Lucky ye didn’t wake up with dicks drawn all over yer face, passin’ out that early.”

Juice huffs out a laugh and pulls back enough to look up at Chibs, eyes blurred with drowsiness. “So that’s it, then.”

And it’s tempting to ask the niggling questions left in the wake of all of Juice’s words, did you and Happy or didn’t you, what about this Eva lassie, she sounds right lovely – and he remembers her now, Juice bringing her around some in the early days – but there’s no point to it tonight. He thinks maybe they’ve both had about as much truth as they can stand in one sitting, and his own eyes are gritty with fatigue. He gives Juice the option anyway. “Aye, Juicy, ‘less you’ve got any more skeletons need airing.”

Juice shakes his head, holding Chibs’s eyes before leaning in to press a chaste kiss to the corner of Chibs’s mouth. Chibs can’t detect anything hidden there, just some mixture of relief and sleepiness, and tips his head to rest his forehead against Juice’s. “Let’s get some shuteye, then, aye?”

Nodding again, Juice pulls away to shut off the lights while Chibs draws the sheets back and climbs in, scarcely able to contain his pleased sigh as he settles into the softness, warmed by their bodies. 

“Night,” Juice mumbles from his side of the bed, and it makes sense now, how no matter what they get up to as far as sex and kink, the lad has boundaries in sleep that Chibs has learned to carefully observe. Juice had nearly nearly cold-cocked him the first time Chibs had spent the night and reached out for a warm body in uninformed slumber.

A lot of things make sense now, and if Chibs wishes they could make sense in any fucking other way, there’s nothing he can do about that – history, and all. But he finds himself watching Juice, the outline of his shoulders faintly visible in a sliver of moonlight sneaking in through the blinds, and wondering if the lad will be there in the morning, if, with all of this ugliness unearthed, he’ll feel too exposed and vulnerable now and run.

The idea burns worse than his current level of tiredness.

“You think too loudly.” Juice’s voice, though quiet, is sudden enough in the silence to shock Chibs out of his reverie. “This is what I was worried about.”

And this, perhaps as much anything else this night, is a moment of truth. If Chibs flubs the words, the lad will, at best, turn away, try to just be Juice, the SAMCRO hacker and wrenchman and occasional fuck-up, to whom Chibs is just another brother in the club. That’s probably the absolute best case scenario if he doesn’t get this right, or close enough to it for Juice to fill in the blanks on his own. 

He keeps landing on unadorned truth; results may vary, reaction-wise, but in his experience, it creates fewer complications later. “No, Juicy,” he says, equally quiet, “not the way you’re worried about. Jus’ don’ want to wake up wi’ you gone.” Whatever the outcome, he owes Juice this bit of honesty, he thinks, to do with as he wishes.

He can feel Juice’s eyes on him in the darkness, can almost hear the lad’s wheels turning; now he’s the one thinking too loudly. Chibs takes it, though, looks back steadily and waits for Juice to come to a decision.

It surprises him when, instead of answering, there’s the rustle of sheets and dip of the mattress as Juice slides closer, then, with only a hint of hesitation, turns on his side to press his back up to Chibs’s front. 

Slowly, half-disbelieving, Chibs drops an arm over Juice’s waist and relaxes a little when Juice grabs his hand, winding their fingers together. “Can’t promise I won’t punch you,” he slurs out, already drifting again, which is huge on its own. “But not goin’ anywhere. Wanna try – ” He drops off then, letting out a soft snore.

Chibs thinks he gets it, anyway, pushes his nose to the back of the lad’s neck and lets his scent lull him to sleep, daring to hope that this will all somehow work out okay.

That he can have this, and that he can keep it.

(End)


End file.
